Saturday, August 14, 2010

Case Study House #22, Stahl House

The Case Study Houses were experiments in American residential architecture sponsored by John Entenza's (later David Travers') Arts & Architecture magazine, which commissioned major architects of the day,

including Richard Neutra, Raphael Soriano, Craig Ellwood, Charles and Ray Eames, Pierre Koenig and Eero Saarinen, to design and build inexpensive and efficient model homes for the United States residential housing boom caused by the end of World War II and the return of millions of soldiers.

The Eames' CSH #8 was assembled by hand labor in about three days. The program ran from 1945 until 1966. The first six houses were built by 1948 and attracted more than 350,000 visitors. While not all 36 designs were built, most of those that were constructed were built in Los Angeles; a few are in the San Francisco Bay Area, and one was built in Phoenix, Arizona. A number of them appear in iconic black and white photographs by architectural photographer Julius Shulman.